In a landmark publication today, the prestigious journal Nature includes five “Letters” regarding checkpoint blockade of the programmed death-1 (PD-1) receptor and its ligand PD-L1. It confirms the promise and potential of the emerging field of immuno-oncology to provide durable and long lasting responses in many cancers.

At the recent 2014 annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), it was surprising to see how many people stayed till the bitter end of the conference to attend the Hot Topic Symposium on Accelerating Tumor Immunity with Agonist Antibodies.

Ovarian cancer is an often neglected area in cancer drug development and historically has often been one of the last solid tumours to be evaluated as part of a life cycle management program. There are a number of reasons for this, but recently that situation has begun to change as our knowledge of the underlying biology improves and new agents are developed that target the particular oncogenic aberrations.

The embargoed press release and abstract for Clovis’s CO–1686 (rociletinib) in advanced lung cancer patients with and without the T790M mutation, originally scheduled for Friday morning in Barcelona, was released last night. The actual presentation is slated for Friday, November 21 during the Plenary session from 11:00 to 13:00 CET.

At the recent Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting at National Harbor, MD, one of the presentations that caught my attention was by Marcel van den Brink MD PhD (@DrMvandenBrink), pictured right, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. (picture courtesy of MSKCC with permission).

This morning we heard that Juno Therapeutics have registered their plans with the SEC for an Initial Public Offering (IPO), highlighting the desire of the VC investors to generate a fast turnaround on their money before a multi-center trial of their CAR-T cell therapy has even started!

There has been a lot of enthusiasm in the immuno-oncology space since ASCO about the possibility of combining a checkpoint inhibitor with an immune stimulator. There are several ideas behind this approach since:

National Harbor, MD – The 2014 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting officially kicked off today, with a record-breaking 1,500 attendees. The organization has grown by 33% over the past year highlighting the explosive progress in the field, and the growing importance of SITC!